Mephistopheles and Margaretta
by NoFootprintsInSand
Summary: "We meet here, say, oh, once a week. You give me one little confession, and I'll let one of your Resistance friends loose." His eyes dance in the candlelight. "Until we run out of confessions. Until we run out of souls. Until there is only one left. Yours." "And if I don't want to confess?" "Then you can still pay. With, let's say...a kiss?"
1. Chapter 1

This fic is inspired by one of my all time favourite artworks, Mephistopheles and Margaretta, a double sided, life size statue carved out of sycamore wood, standing in the Salar Jung Museum. It's is based on characters from Goethe's Faust.

Everything belongs to Ubisoft. Also, if you're here reading Far Cry fanfic then you probably already know that there will be mature themes as part and parcel but just in case: MATURE THEMES. John Seed - and his entire family with him - is fucked up and damaged and psychotic and irresistible, IRRESISTIBLE writing fodder.

* * *

"_...who are you, then?"_

"_I am part of that power_

_which eternally wills evil_

_and eternally works good._

_I am the spirit that negates._

_And rightly so, for all that comes to be_

_Deserves to perish wretchedly;_

'_Twere better nothing would begin._

_Thus everything that your terms, 'sin,'_

'_Destruction,' 'evil' represent—_

_That is my proper element."_

_Faust_, J.W von Goethe

* * *

I

* * *

"_Deputy! I know you can hear me. Switch to channel 14, if you please. A private frequency_."

His voice lowers, and she wonders how he can make it sound so savage and violent through so much static.

"_Just us."_

John Seed.

The sharp edges of the radio cut into the palm of her hand, and she resists the urge to simply hurl it from the edge of the cliff. She's up in the Whitetails, and though the place _reeks_ of the oldest Seed brother this is still the region of Hope County where she feels the most at home.

If it can be called that. She's unsure what 'home' even means any longer.

Still.

Sharp, clean air and so much beauty it's almost intrusive, almost paralysing her senses. Wide open spaces. The Milky Way arching above her at night. The Andromeda galaxy with its solemn, pulling light. So much _space_. She could never feel claustrophobic here. A reminder what it is she's fighting for. A reminder not to give up, not to simply curl up somewhere and sleep for a thousand years.

Even though she wants to.

"_You have 10 seconds_."

With a choked sigh she picks up the radio and presses the call button.

"_Fine_, Seed."

She switches frequency to his proffered private one, hisses into the mouthpiece.

"What do you want?"

His reply is instantaneous, and that's worse than when he's playing, drawing things out.

"_I want you to meet me at the Lamb of God church tonight. Alone."_

She presses the speak button so hard she's sure it'll leave an indent in her thumb for weeks.

"And why would I want to do that?"

"_Because, Deputy, sweating bullets in my bunker right at this very moment is every lowlife member of the Resistance that you, presumably, hold dear. Quite the coup, even if I do say so myself. Took some planning. Some __**doing**__."_

His emphasis on the last words sends a shiver through her. Assuming he isn't lying this clearly hadn't gone down without bloodshed.

He keeps talking, seemingly unwilling to allow her even a second to gather herself together and properly _think_.

"_I'll see you tonight."_

* * *

"A crypt? A fucking _crypt_, Seed? Really?"

"Ah, Deputy, kind of you to join me. And, setting is everything."

His voice echoes from within the darkness of the other end of the sepulchral space, making her aware of how visible she is, standing in the faint light from the entrance. Outlined and blind and vulnerable.

Afraid.

And furious.

She takes a step out of the light, a step closer to him.

"You're a different kind of sick."

"You wound me."

He sounds anything but. His voice is even, with an undertone she struggles to identify.

"I came, Seed. Talk."

She takes another step towards him, eager to escape the light, eager for the protection of the shadows.

"Ah ah ah. Before you come any closer...no weapons."

She scoffs.

"You've got to be kidding me."

"To your left."

She turns and looks, and in the dim light sees his knife, the one he uses for atonement, sitting in an alcove next to a revolver and a few scattered bones. Human, by the looks of it.

That dramatic bastard. She stifles a giggle, but only because she fears it might come out as a sob.

A sudden spark, and his face emerges from within the dark, lit with the flickering light from one match. He touches it to the wick of a candle, then busies himself lighting several more, apparently heedless of any danger his distraction could illicit. She detests his needless showmanship, and she abhors her helplessness, but she unholsters her service weapon and places it next to his knife. Follows it with several knives of her own. Leaves one hidden inside the sock on her right foot.

"I don't think so, you little terror. The last one too, there's a good girl."

She grimaces at his patronising tone, but obeys. He's calling the shots right now, and she rages vainly against impotence. This isn't her forte. Fast and furious actions, sending bullets into bodies, smashing skulls...those she can do. Playing dangerous games with someone like John Seed...she feels like black, impenetrable water is closing over her head.

Feels like she's sinking.

He claps his hands together, brisk, all cheerful business.

"Now then! I assume you've verified the information I gave you?"

She had. He'd had Nick Rye, Mary May Fairgrave and Pastor Jerome since she escaped her botched atonement in Fall's End, and now he had gathered up several more.

Quite the coup, indeed.

"You think I'd _be_ here otherwise? Let them go."

His smile is violent.

"Afraid it won't be quite that easy." He taps his chin "You see, you've forced me to get…creative."

She freezes. By now she knows enough of him to know that 'creative' isn't good. His tattoo crawls on her chest.

She takes a second to study him properly. Versions of him slide across his face even as she watches. He hides how truly lethal he is under a veneer of deranged mirth, under flamboyant gestures and distorted faith. Joseph Seed himself had described his younger brother as a monster with a chameleon face, and she agrees.

"Does Joseph know you're doing this?"

"Well, I've always enjoyed a certain autonomy," he answers easily.

"So no, then."

He shrugs, grins, that quick, uneven flash of teeth that signals true danger. Then he starts pacing, lazy, unhurried movements, careful not to spook her.

"To the crux of the matter. You must atone. That's been ordered of me, and of you. And to atone you must confess. You've proved a _most_ unwilling disciple, so I've been forced, as I say, to get creative. Extracurricular activities. I'm sure Joseph will agree that the end justifies the means."

"Just fucking tell me what you want!"

He stops in front of her.

"It's a generous exchange, Deputy. You for _all_ of them."

She doesn't hesitate.

"Fine. _Fine_. Let's do it." And she moves towards him with her arms outstretched. Offers him her wrists, presents him with her surrender.

He sighs, rolls his eyes,

"Oh, _you_. Your heroine complex is so terribly boring and trite. Besides, you would only escape, and this whole thing start over again. No. I've got something _better _in mind."

_Shit_.

She should've known he wouldn't let it be that easy.

She is so close to him that she has to crane her neck to meet his eyes, but he makes no move to touch her. Unnerving in its own right, for he is a tactile man, fond of using touch to frighten and intimidate.

"Your soul." His face is truly terrifying then, all of his teeth bared, his eyes sucking at hers. "One soul in exchange for _many_ burning ones."

Oh, he doesn't _need_ to touch her. Her skin itches with his gaze alone as he continues.

"We meet here, say, oh, once a week. You give me one little confession, and I'll let one of your Resistance friends loose." His eyes dance in the candlelight, and it looks an awful lot like victory slipping in and out. "Until we run out of confessions. Until we run out of souls. Until there is only one left. Yours."

Ah. He wants something protracted, drawn out. Wants to rip her to pieces slowly, take his time with the bloodletting. What a pity that right now she doesn't have much choice but to agree.

"And if I don't want to confess?"

"Then you can still pay. With, oh, let's say...a kiss?" His smile is thoroughly vicious now, and she knows it's a need for power and control behind this, not lust, nor anything else. Just an urge to bend and break her. "If you're willing to do neither, one of your little friends dies. But, I'll let you pick which one!" His nod is magnanimous, benevolent.

He's such a skilful fraud.

"How do I know you'll do what you promise?"

He rocks back on his heels, raises an eyebrow. His earring catches the light, and her fingers tingle with the urge to rip it straight out of his ear.

"Oh, _obviously_ you have my word."

"Yeah. Must be hard to put nonexistent honour on the line," she whispers, and he laughs, because he knows he's winning.

Has won.

"Do we have an agreement?"

A deal, a bargain: burning souls in exchange for hers. Oh, she is more stupid even than old Faust. But before she sells herself down this black river of his she tries to barter some more.

"While we're...while we're doing this, I want you to promise not to hurt them. Kim Rye is pregnant. They're all _good_ people. None of them deserve this."

His face goes strange then, thoughts turned inwards, curious flutters behind his eyes.

"I know you don't believe this, but right now, in my bunker, they are much safer than you."

He turns taut and keen again, attention wholly on her.

"_Do we have an agreement,_ Deputy?"

She feels it, how this can't ever end well, how this is the beginning of her end

"Yes," she says anyway.

He holds his hand out, and she takes it, damn her to _hell_. His hand is warm, dry, and she can feel his demons move just underneath his skin. They shake once, then he lets her go, takes a step back. Seems to enjoy giving her the illusion of space, even though she has none.

How he loves his mind games.

"The first confession I require from you, Deputy, is quite simple. Just your name will do."

Not so simple at all, nor easy, she thinks. There is power in a name, and he's already got far too much of that.

"Margaret," she spits.

His glee is something terrible.

"Oh that is _perfect_," he sighs, and she takes a step back because she knows old stories too.

"I don't want you using it," she snarls. Doesn't want her name resting on his tongue, doesn't want it rolling around his mouth.

He executes a mocking little bow, the distorted light licking his face, hollowing out his cheeks, making his eyes simmer black.

"As you wish," he says, cold laughter bubbling in his voice. "Until next time."

She turns and leaves.

* * *

An hour later her radio crackles to life.

"_Kim Rye is free. See you next week."_

* * *

A week later and she's back in the crypt.

She steps inside the same way she did before, nostrils flaring and instincts free-falling like frightened birds. Skittish and breathless, wondering if this time, this time it's a trap?

But he stands alone once again, waiting for her in his long coat and his shadows, surrounded by candles and weeping stone.

It seems he's taking his little game seriously enough to abide by his own rules.

"Hello," he says, and waits while she puts her weapons down next to his. Then he gestures towards a piece of pew leaning against a pillar. It wasn't there last time; he must have taken it from the abandoned church above. "Have a seat."

And she walks across the floor and she sits down on the wobbly pew, looks up at him where he stands before her.

The preacher in this awful little church play.

"How _is_ the lovely Mrs. Rye?" he asks, head tilted slightly to the side in faux concern.

She resists the urge to grind her teeth, to shout. He would only feed from it.

"Both her and the baby are doing fine, all things considered."

It's information she'd gleaned secondhand, because she had been too ashamed to go see Kim herself.

"Ah, that is _such_ a relief to hear."

She wants to tear his little smile clean from his face but he straightens now, businesslike and keen, false pleasantries over and done with.

"One confession for one soul," he reminds her as if she needs reminding. "And they are _burning_ over in my bunker, all those people on your conscience."

"Begin then," she rasps, and sweat beads like pearls on her forehead at the way he looks at her.

He rubs his hands together, raises a brow.

"How many people have you killed since you came here? In Hope County?"

His face is relaxed, easy, the friendly confessor, the devoted priest, and she opens her mouth to answer.

"...And don't lie to me now. I will know. I've done this for a _very_ long time. I will _know_."

She closes it again. She doesn't doubt him for a second. She remembers what Joseph has written about him. She can never forget.

"Well?"

His voice is velvet, his voice is blood. He moves a little closer, forces her to tilt her neck at an uncomfortable angle, lean it against the rough wood of the broken pew. She tries to run numbers in her head as he waits, but all is blank, blank and grey.

"I don't have all night, you know."

She wants to scream at him, but he would like that too much. She tries to remember faces, but is distracted by her own heartbeats in her ears, by the sound of her blood rushing in shame.

"_Surely_ you know how many lives you've snuffed out?"

She can feel a splinter digging into her neck, and she presses herself further back, feels the wood cutting in. But it hurts much less than his words.

"I don't, alright? I'm…I'm not sure. You happy? That what you wanted to hear?"

"Yes, little Wrath," he coos. "That's what I wanted to hear."

She stands to leave, and he backs up a couple of steps to let her pass, throws his arm out in a grand gesture towards the exit. She wants to wipe the ugly triumph off his face, but she doesn't think she can.

She stops in the doorway, looks over her shoulder at him.

"How about you? Do you know how many people you've killed?"

He glances at her from where he's putting the revolver in his leg holster, sliding the knife into the waistband of his jeans. His voice, when he speaks, is unlike anything she's heard from him before. A singular mix of reverence and coldness, bloodthirst and vulnerability.

"Of course. I remember them all. Every single one. Their faces, their names. Their sins."

She turns and leaves then, not another word. She pulls splinters of wood out of her neck as she picks her way between gravestones, and wishes she could see her blood, make sure it's still red.

Not black.

* * *

Just two words from the radio, his voice flat.

"_Mary May_."

She doesn't answer him, she can't stand giving him any more of her words just now. She keeps moving into the night instead.

She belongs there, now more than ever.

He'd made her see that.

* * *

The next time she goes back she feels broken before they've even begun, walks across the graveyard towards the church with a wounded gait, like a soldier returning home just to die.

His coat is thrown over the broken pew, and she throws hers on top of his. It's warm down here, and she doesn't quite understand how, what with dampness dripping from the masonry and a chill wind seeping through the entrance in odd gusts.

Yet there's a sheen of sweat on both of their foreheads, and he rolls up his shirt sleeves as he turns to face her.

"Everything well with Mary May?"

She shrugs, doesn't want to admit that she's not been to see her, check on her. Doesn't want him to know about her self-imposed isolation, how she wanders and flits when she's not _here_.

"Did she ever show you her tattoo? It's one of my best. I was able to really take my time with that one. That was before you came along, of course," he murmurs as an aside, and she likes the implication of that.

But enough. She can't stand the preamble, has no time for grace.

"Just begin. I don't have all night."

"Yes, what a busy life you lead, sleeping rough, killing people, blowing things up. Enriching, no?"

She doesn't answer, crosses her arms over her chest where she stands. He leans against the wall, seemingly casual, relaxed, but she senses how coiled he is, how he is sniffing for blood. Ready to bare teeth.

"Do you have nightmares, Deputy?"

She recoils as if he'd just slapped her, but the ringing in her ears comes from dread.

"Yes."

"Tell me about them."

"No," she whispers. "No, I'd rather let you kiss me, you fuck. I rather let you touch me than tell you about those. They're _mine_."

He shrugs as if this means nothing to him.

"Very well."

He pushes off the wall, closes the small distance between them. Gets so close to her that she can feel the heat of him through her thin shirt, feel his breath touching her forehead, whispering across her hair.

Then he touches two fingers to her chin, tilts her head up just a bit, and her skin is too tight for her body, her breaths are stuttery and thin.

She thinks he will brutalise her with his lips, thinks he will bite and bruise and mark as ruthlessly as he does everything else.

But he doesn't. He goes lightly, doesn't even touch his lips to hers. Brushes them across her ear and down her neck, instead. Finds her pulse and stays there for a second or two, enough to count her heartbeats in his head.

Too fast. They beat too fast.

He releases her again, takes a small step back, raises a dark brow at what she's sure he can see in her face.

Gentleness is worse.

But as she staggers out of there, holds herself upright on crumbling tombstones as she goes, she realises that when he touched her she forgot everything else.

Just for a second or two. Just a fragment of time.

But it had felt like a tiny piece of encapsulated eternity, and it had been _bliss_.

* * *

"_Charlemagne Boshaw. More or less intact."_

* * *

She'd spent the week as far away from Holland Valley and him as she could get, up in the mountains, trying to reassemble herself, trying to shake the loose parts of her right. But the stars look like they're scattered wrong across the sky, and the sharp winds sigh about things she doesn't want to hear.

There's no relief up here anymore. Perhaps that was always a lie.

As soon as she steps over the threshold and sees him waiting for her all those loose pieces clatter at her feet, roll away across the stone floor, into the shadows towards him.

She will never gather them all up again.

"Did you have a pleasant stay back in the Whitetails?"

Of course he knows where she's been.

"No."

He hums, shakes a lock of hair from his forehead and those wretched candles seem to make his tattoos move, make optical illusions out of the sins on his hands.

"Let's get this over with," she says. "I'm tired. I want to sleep." Just for an hour. In her car. Or maybe a ditch somewhere.

He seems pleased to hear of her exhaustion, as if he is not the very being that's been feeding on her energy. His voice is deep, raspy as he speaks. Ready to feast.

"What is the worst thing you've ever done, Deputy?"

A picture reel spins and flickers in her mind then, coloured in splotches of red and grey; blood and brains and bone marrow too.

"No. Kiss," she murmurs, and thinks _that_ might actually be the answer to his question.

He walks towards her, boots scraping the floor, and he crowds her against a pillar.

She turns her face up, basks in the zeal of him, waits.

His fingers slowly, slowly pulls her shirt down and to the side, careful to just barely touch her. She can feel her breath crowding her throat at this almost-touch, this whisper of fingertips traversing her skin. And then he bends down, and once again it's not her mouth he seeks out, but _Wrath_, and his lips trace the letters, barely there, just tiny flutters. When he reaches the end his tongue flicks out, only just, licks along the last curve of the 'h'.

Her breath stutters, whooshes through her lips in a moan that she immediately wants to steal back.

"You taste of salt," he says.

He's not unaffected either. The skies come falling from his eyes, and his grip on her arms will leave ghosts behind. A flush high on his cheeks, his hair falling over his brow.

That tiny victory is like complex wine on her tongue, smokey and deep.

Still. He's the one releasing her and taking a step back, and she is the one following him, before she catches herself and stops dead.

She rights her shirt, and she wants to hurt him for making her feel like this, for making her feel like...like she _needs_ him to make everything inside her go quiet.

"I hated that."

He hums, moves his hands lazily in front of his chest.

"No. No you did not. Bye for now."

She punches the stone wall as hard as she can, treasures the almost unbearable pain, then leaves to the sound of his low chuckle.

* * *

"_Nick Rye. See you next week. I can't __**wait**__."_


	2. Chapter 2

_"When scholars study a thing, they strive_

_To kill it first, if its alive;_

_Then they have the parts and they've lost the whole_

_For the link that's missing was the living soul."_

Faust, J.W von Goethe

* * *

II

* * *

She arrives to their next weekly rendezvous already furious, and she has decided that she will never ever let him kiss her again.

He reads her like a stone tablet and disregards the text of her as easily as he does commandments, grins at her because he knows it'll get her hackles up.

"Not wise to show up to a confession angry. It'll taint that purifying feeling."

"Go to fuck with your pseudo-religious quackery, Seed. We both know it's bullshit."

She knows how to raise his hackles too, and she thinks it might almost be worth the hurt she knows will come.

He waits quietly as she puts her weapons down next to his, but she slides along his sharpened lines in the corner of her eye, notes the stiffness of him, the rigid anger. She moves to stand opposite him on the floor some ways away, shadows between them, but she can still see his face.

"Well?" she shrugs at him, one shoulder only, doesn't want to give him more.

His smile is like shrapnel lodged in her brain.

"Why did you decide to join the police force?"

She keeps her stance easy, her eyes on him. Unflinching. Sure.

"I wanted to help people. I wanted to do good." The words glide from her lips without effort, smooth and slippery and shiny.

_His_ words crack from his mouth like gunshots, fired from an enemy trench far too close.

"You _lie._"

She doesn't take a step back, but only because she forces herself to stay put.

"Excuse me?"

Just like that, all his other masks slide off him and he's purely a predator as he stalks towards her, his mouth curled into a snarl, his fists clenched by his side.

"I've spent all my life learning about truth and lies. I've had it beaten into me and then pulled out of me again. I know all the little tells. All the twitches and shivers and shakes. And you, you _lie_."

She doesn't lie again, doesn't deny. She can't, not in the furnace of his conviction. She's struck mute instead, staring up into his face, at all the things fluttering like broken wings in his eyes.

"Take your shirt off."

"What?" she breathes, and her heart beats the taste of iron into her mouth.

"Take. It. Off." He moves away from her, crosses the floor over to the alcove, picks up his knife. It glints, it ricochets terror and relief in the dim light as he returns back to her.

"I'm waiting, _Margaret_."

She can't say no, he won't allow it, and perhaps she doesn't want to. Because there is a queer, exquisite freedom in finding herself without a choice. In having nowhere to go but the path ordained her. In being told what to _do_.

Supplication is a shimmering thing clinging to her eyelashes, touching her lips, her hair.

With her head strangely and blessedly empty she slowly pulls her shirt over her head and tosses it onto the stone floor. Stands there in her jeans and bra.

He wastes no time and sinks down to his knees before her, grabs her left hip in a bruising hold.

"Hold still."

And he begins to slide the knife across her skin, as skilful and as sure as only a true master of his craft can be.

The inside of her head goes bright white, and all narrows down to sensations. Her hair tickling the top of her breasts. His breath warming the fragile skin on her belly, his lips so close they're almost touching her there. His fingers imprinting her hip. His knife parting flesh, deftly, delicately, almost tenderly. Blood trickling, warm and thick, inside the waistband of her jeans.

Her hands find his hair, and she holds on to it, clutches and pulls at the dark silken feel of it, her own head thrown back.

She's not sure how much time passes, loses track almost entirely, there is only John and his knife and the wrenching, blissful escape of pain.

"I'm done."

His voice is husky, hoarse, and she looks down, lets her hands slide from his hair to his shoulders as she takes in her new letters.

'_Liar_', carved from her stomach and across her side in flowing cursive, the 'r' ending right above her hip bone. Delicate lines, all things considered.

She looks at him again, her hands still on his shoulders. Rapture paints his face in chiaroscuro, and she is starting to think he is _beautiful_.

How very dangerous.

Then again, she has always liked broken people the best, and so does he.

Especially ones he's broken all by himself.

* * *

There's no radio transmission from him after she leaves that evening.

Her fingers remain on the receiver, just in case. But all is silent, and she is not surprised. She tries to count souls, but the numbers slide through her fingers, and the shame burns the back of her throat.

She will have to do better next week. Much better.

* * *

She's first next time, is waiting for him down there in the dark, anticipation and revulsion moving across her skin, sharpening her senses, tickling the inside of her skull.

He looks very briefly surprised to see her already standing there, just a quick flash on his face as he crosses the threshold, then he hands her the matches.

"How's your word?"

"It's fine," she snaps, not wanting to tell him how she's been clinging to the burn of it during sleepless nights.

He carefully lifts the hem of her shirt up as she starts lighting the candles, casts an experienced eye over the lines.

"You're healing fine. Just as well, really."

She hates the implications of that. She loves the implications of that.

"Carry on, Seed."

He lets go of her shirt and takes a step back.

"Last week no resistance member was released, and that was _your_ fault. If you're a good girl and give me everything I want tonight, you can have two."

She straightens her back and her resolve, nods once. Meets his eyes and feel a nebulous, dusky thread run from her to him. It strings them together even as he starts moving around the crypt.

"How do you _feel_ when you kill?"

He circles behind her, and she resists the urge to turn her head, track him with her eyes.

"And remember, _remember_ what happens when you lie."

He's in front of her again, hands behind his back, and his eyes seek the etched word on her stomach, where it just barely peeks out between waistband and hem.

"I feel...good."

He's a wolf sensing weakness, smelling blood. She's a doe with a wound in her side. Presenting for him with the injury, allowing him to touch it and finger paint with the blood.

"And?"

"I feel _powerful._ I feel omnipotent. I feel like I rule over life and death."

She's got her eyes closed, but his mirth seeps through her eyelids.

"Do you _like_ it, Deputy? Do you like killing?"

"Yes!" It's a shouted sob, and it's true.

Nausea moves bitter and acrid in her gut. How _delicately_ he lures barbed wire from her throat, over her tongue and out on the air between them. Her mouth is full of blood from her confession, and he has not touched her once.

She thinks she would rather have his knife trace words across her skin again.

And yet...

What a _maestro_ he is. What a demon, that he has her wishing he would cut skin from her body instead...instead of this. Instead of flaying the truth from her _mind._ It hadn't been that hard for him. She had been full, overflowing, quivering with a need to let it spatter onto the floor; the guilt, the sin.

His smile as he looks down on her is almost fond.

"Lady Wrath indeed."

Her head feels oddly clear. Strange, isn't it, how he always manages to make her see colours right?

"And how do _you_ feel when you kill, John?"

His answer is instant and unapologetic.

"I feel like God. I feel like an angel-maker."

She moves suddenly, staggers to one of the dark corners and retches, dry heaves. She wipes at her mouth and nose with her sleeve and turns back to him. She doesn't know what to do with this _pull_ towards him, doesn't know what to do with the dread.

"You are beautiful when you cry."

She lifts her fingers to her face, feels in wonder and horror the wetness on her cheeks. She hadn't realised. She had forgotten how.

"May I go?"

"Of course," he says, dripping with false kindness.

Just as she crosses the threshold she hears him quietly, softly say her name, _Margaret,_ and she spins around with anger tumbling out of her raw throat. He's got no right to say it so gently like that, like he doesn't hate her.

But his words stop her, smother her fury in their infancy, twist it to resignation instead.

"What is the difference between us?"

Oh, no, no, she can't. She _can't_.

"Fuck you, Seed."

He nods his head at her, once, almost solemn.

"When I have your soul I'm going to eat it.

* * *

_"Adelaide and Hurk Drubman. Not a moment too soon."_

She stills over the cooling corpses she's looting, but she doesn't reply. She never does.

* * *

She's first again, fidgets and dances impatiently on the spot as she waits for him to show. He's not surprised this time, simply inclines his head, shrugs off his coat and starts lighting the candles.

"Well aren't you keen, Deputy. You're starting to like this, aren't you?"

"Is that tonight's confession?" she snaps, but her heart isn't in it. She's restless, afire, doesn't know how to stand still, doesn't know how to breathe right. Something's happening to her, and she can't name it, can't catalogue it and put it away.

"It's not. Instead I want to return to a previous one." He sounds like such a l_awyer._ "This time I expect you not to lie."

She makes a quick movement with her hand, _yes, yes, carry on._

"Why did you join the police?"

She's been waiting for this question since the first time he asked it; she's been preparing, and yet his words are ice on her neck.

"I killed a man. When I was younger."

The look on his face terrifies her.

"Why?"

"He tried to hurt me first."

"And you joined because you wanted to atone?"

"I joined because I wanted to atone for _liking_ it. I bashed his head in with a rock. I got to watch as he died. It was...intriguing; it happened in little fits and starts. Gasps and twitches and brains and blood. I couldn't stop thinking about it. I did that, and he _deserved_ it, and I loved the power. I knew it was wrong. I've tried to make up for it ever since. But then…"

He looks like she just handed him her beating, bloodied heart on a platter, looks like he's about to tear into it raw.

"...then you came here, and you've done nothing but killing since. Wrathful and proud and greedy for lives. Oh, you are _riddled_ with sin. What a delicious mouthful you are."

She feels light now, a feather floating in the dark, dank air. The feeling won't last, she knows, soon she'll hate the inside of her head again.

She moves across the floor towards him, fast, so fast, a reminder of what a ferocious, wild thing she is outside of _him_, outside of _them_. She pushes him against the wall and she's in charge of the decision this time, of _how_ to kiss, _where_ to kiss, and she goes for his lips, finally. She's been wondering what they taste like. He allows it, opens, slides his tongue against hers, digs his fingers into her hair and hurls them around so that she's the one with her back against stone.

Must always be the one in control, the one holding the power.

But she can't get enough. She licks into his mouth, there is darkness and death and prayers on his tongue, she tastes them, she tastes _him_. She whines deep down as he pulls her hair, pushes his thigh between hers so she can grind against him. He nips at her bottom lip, draws blood, licks it away, groans at the taste.

She throws a hand out between them, pushes against his chest, and he stops, and she curls her hand against his frenetic heartbeats. They rush in time with hers.

"You asked if there's a difference between us."

She combs dishevelled hair behind her ears with one hand, feels how he goes still and honed. She speaks against his lips, breathes her words straight down his throat.

"I might enjoy how killing makes me feel, Seed, but you enjoy everything that comes before _more,_ and don't you fucking _dare_ hide behind religion. You just like inflicting pain."

His eyes flare and rage straight into hers, but he doesn't deny it. John Seed is many things, nearly all of them monstrous, but she thinks that he's not a liar.

He's forever angry though. Angry with the world, the universe. Humanity.

He might keep his fury wrapped in tattered ropes, but he can't quell it. No one can, not even Joseph. Not ever. It's always there. The only difference is how high the flames burn behind his eyes. And now every edge and line of him is razor sharp, and she will cut herself, she will. A thousand little cuts, she will bleed to death right here on the uneven stone floor.

"How did you get this damaged? How did you become so _wicked?_ she whispers, and she leans back so that she may properly take in his face.

He skilfully lowers one of his masks then, goes all smooth and blank, except his eyes. She finds that she wants his real face back. Wants to touch it again, wants to run her nails along the furrows and dive inside his mouth.

"Time to leeeeave," he sing-songs.

She obeys.

* * *

_"Casey Fixman. Don't be late next week."_

But she's busy in the Henbane for a long while after that, head all wrong, trapped by Bliss and hallucinations and terror.


	3. Chapter 3

"_How strangely through the hollows glimmering_

_Like a false dawn the dull light glows!_

_Into crevasses glinting, shimmering_

_Into each deep abyss it goes"_

_Faust_, J.W von Goethe

* * *

III

* * *

When she next steps over the threshold to the crypt he's there immediately, grabs her and slams her against the wall, presses against her with his entire body, breathes fury into her mouth.

"I waited here every week," he growls "but you never came." He crowds her harder against the stone, wraps unforgiving fingers around her throat. "Though I do understand you've been _busy_."

She thinks several weeks might have gone by since she saw him last, perhaps even months, but she can't be sure. Her grasp on the way time moves, on how minutes and hours and days work, is unsteady and slippery after her time in the Henbane.

"I've _missed_ you," she answers, and it's a startled realisation, a confession and an accusation, all flung together into one broken, wretched thing.

He laughs, reaches down and grabs her hands, brings them up to his face. Her knuckles are ragged, bloody and raw, and he drags his fingers across them, hard, makes sure it hurts.

"How did it feel? How did it feel to kill my sister?"

She tries to pull her hands out of his grip, but he won't allow it, he digs his fingers in deeper, makes it hurt more. Something slithers and twists in his eyes at her pained gasp, and she stops struggling. Let him look. Let her hands, wicked instruments of murder, stay enclosed within his. Let him _see_. He's her confessor, is he not?

And hardly a stranger to violence and murder by his own bloody hands.

"I didn't want to kill her. I felt sorry for her. But I did it anyway."

Somehow, she thinks, that makes it worse.

"Why?"

He looks like he actually cares to hear her answer, and her mind flits and jerks around, tries to find a grip, an anchor.

She finds _him_, but he's quicksand.

"I was so _angry_."

At this one of his hands lets go of hers and, almost absently, he glides it inside the collar of her tee, runs a finger along the tattoo he gave her, the letters spelling out '_wrath'_.

"And," she whispers, "I think she wanted me to."

He pulls his hand from her collar then, and slides it up underneath the hem instead, finds '_liar'_ on her stomach, healed now, and traces the shape of it.

It tickles.

"No, really, John," she says, tips her head back, seeks his eyes, tries to make him see memories through _hers_. "She hardly resisted at the end. She just let me..."

...beat her to death. She remembers fragile bones breaking, soft tissue giving way, tendons snapping. White becoming red. Marrow. And then delicate Faith Seed had gone floating down the river, more broken even than Ophelia.

Part of her had wanted to float right along with the twisted body.

His voice is sharp-edged and jagged, like he's chewing on rocks when he speaks.

"Did she deserve it too?"

She shudders at this vicious callback to her last confession, and a part of her can appreciate it for his mastery of his craft. He really is singular in the way he can rip at a jugular, tear at it until there's no blood left to let.

"Not as much," she whispers. "But enough."

"I ought to kill you right back," he says, moves both his hands to her throat, rests his thumbs in the hollow at the base, his fingers at the nape of her neck. Encircles it, but not squeezing enough to cut off her words. At least not yet.

"She...showed me things. In the Bliss. It was real. It was real _then_. It was…I saw…"

"...the world end," he finishes for her. "You saw the world end."

"Yes."

His fingers are stroking the soft skin on the side of her throat now, finding her pulse, tapping along to its rhythm, looking for truth, looking for lies.

"Do you believe it?"

"I did when I saw it," she says, and it's defeat tumbling out of her mouth, not words.

He lowers his head so that he may look straight into her eyes. His whole body is still pressed into hers, and she is starting to fear its absence, the cold.

"And now?"

"No," she says, then hesitates when she feels his finger sharply tap her pulse. "I don't know," she amends, and that is the most she can ever give him. It's already far too much.

He knows it too.

"Best confession yet, little Margaret," he whispers. "You're free to go."

But he doesn't let go of her.

He runs his hands through her hair instead, sieves locks between his fingers, plays absentmindedly with the strands as he thinks. She looks at her own hair as if it belongs to someone else, is detached from her scalp. It was fair and honey when she first came to Hope County, now it gleams of ash in the light from his candles. Too much subterranean dwelling, she thinks, too little sun.

"I like it better this way," he says, as if he's carefully plucked words out of her head, has perhaps found them tangled in the waves of her hair. She's not surprised, it seems like it happens sometimes now, that their thoughts cling to each other and join.

"What do you want, John?"

He presses yet closer, rigid, unyielding, and she can feel something moving just underneath her skin. She thinks it might be desire.

"I want to fuck you."

"Yes," she says.

His face is painted in shadows of triumph and lust, and he puts both hands on her shoulders, pushes himself back a couple of steps.

"Take your clothes off."

She hesitates for a second, but at his dark frown she pulls her tee over her head. Then her bra, and her nipples pebble when touched by crypt air, by his rapacious gaze.

Her boots, her jeans and underwear, and she stands before him, naked and barefoot.

He says nothing, takes his time, moves his eyes slowly across her body, and she keeps her head high; she's got nothing to be ashamed of. But her heart beats unevenly in her ears, she feels light, she feels heavy, she's falling from a precipice through thick air.

She can't breathe.

"You are _exquisite_ when you submit."

His voice is even, soft, but every line of him is hazy, as if she sees him through scorching, vibrating air. He holds himself tightly restrained, bares his teeth with the effort, but he's got more to say before he sets himself loose.

"I'm going to devour you."

Then he's on her.

He lifts her, is much stronger than he looks, effortless and with a grip around her waist and thigh that is crossing the line to cruel. He throws an arm out, and guns and knives and bones go rattling and slamming to the floor as he puts her down in their weapon alcove.

It's a perfect height, like it was made for this, and he insinuates himself between her thighs, pushes them apart with a growl, then latches onto her neck. Grabs the skin on top of her pulse and sucks, bites, moves across her collarbone, leaves a beautiful trail of destruction up to her lips.

When he kisses her too many of his shadows leaks into her through his mouth, and she swallows them all down, all the night inside of him, all the avarice. His tongue feels like it belongs there, in her mouth, and she sucks on it, hard, enjoys his growl.

She presses her face into the side of his neck, and the smell of him tilts her mind sharply. Clean sweat, cedar and _smoke_. Like he burned all the cedars down. She can smell the flames too, can smell the heat and the madness and it's the best breath she's ever drawn.

He drags his hands along the contours of her, calluses and fingerprints on her breasts, her flanks, her thighs, then inwards. And she, she grabs the front of his silken burgundy shirt and pulls. Leans forward as best as he'll let her and runs her tongue along '_sloth'_, thinks that never ever has a purported sin been so wrong.

He touches her, knowing fingers slip and slide along folds.

"You're _dripping,"_ he speaks straight into her ear, and pushes a finger, then two into her. She arches up from her stone seat, runs her hand down the front of him, feels him hard and heavy against her palm, and she tugs at his belt buckle.

"And you need to come inside."

He takes the smallest step back then, just enough to unbutton his jeans, pull the zipper down and free his cock. He fists himself, runs one hand up and down the length of him one, two, three times as he touches her with the other, and she can't draw breaths the right way anymore.

Then he harshly pulls her forward, has her on the very edge, forcing her to wrap her legs around his waist for balance. She rips his shirt open, needs to feel his skin against hers, needs to feel his tattoos and scars burn against her breasts. He lines himself up, and she's not quite ready yet, it's been so long since she last did this, but she doesn't stop him when he drives into her, she can't. She _won't_. She parts for him, and it hurts, and she wants it to hurt more.

She knows she still alive that way.

He gives her no time to get used to him inside her, starts moving straight away, snaps his hips and pushes her back against the alcove wall with the force. He seems determined to bottom out with every stroke; he can't take his eyes off the lewd bounce of her breasts each time he does. Bends down to draw a nipple between his lips, lets his own thrusts push it deeper into his mouth.

She throws her head back and wonders if this is hell, and if so how she can barter her way to stay forever. She has already sold her soul to the devil, has she not? It seems only fair she gets to live here, too. She wants to spend eternity split open around him, tied to his stake, licked by the flames of his madness.

He presses his forehead against hers, and angles his thrusts so that he hits her just right. The tension. This string vibrating, about to snap, inside her. Her mind becomes moths fluttering against a window, desperate to break though and burn their wings on fire, and with one particularly brutal thrust the glass finally bursts and she comes and her hoarse screams are echoing between the damp stone arches.

She screams his name, and it is beautiful and it is ugly and she has never felt like this before.

He gives no quarter, allows her no time to come back down. He pulls out, turns her around, presses a hand between her shoulder blades so that she bends over as deep as he likes. Takes her hands and puts them at the edge of the alcove.

"Hold on."

Then he kicks her legs wider apart, too wide, forcing her to arch her back to hold her position. He grabs her hair, winds it about his fist, wrenches at it so her head is drawn back, jugular exposed and bared. The other hits down on her buttocks with a sharp smack that reverberates around the crypt, then moves out to her hip, grabs it in a bruising grip.

"You will stay like this for me." His voice is guttural, a hiss from the underworld, and she whines her acquiescence.

And he pushes back inside, he belongs there now, and it's much deeper this way, much more.

Too much.

Not enough.

He ruts into her mercilessly, and everything narrows down to this. The button of his jeans and his belt buckle digging into the soft skin of her backside. His harsh breaths, his growls. The sheen of sweat on them both. His cock bruising her insides in the most acute, exquisite way. Her hands dragging along the rough stone as she tries to hold still for him.

She feels him go impossibly larger inside her, and his pace stutters, then he comes with a stifled roar, pushes even further inside her and holds still, so far up she can feel him pulse inside her heart.

He pulls her up against him by her hair then, puts a forearm across her throat and his teeth deep into her neck. Chokes and bites her as he empties as deep inside her as he can get.

They stand like that for a moment, her arms thrown back to run her fingers through his hair, him lapping at the blood from the wound his teeth made on her neck. Then he pulls out and pushes her down again, has her leaning against the wall by the flayed palms of her hands.

"You'll stay like this. I want nothing spilled. It's all to stay inside you where it belongs."

So she stands there bent forward, panting, covered in bruises and bite marks, as he rights his clothing, and brushes his hair back into place, then moves close to her again

Everything is quiet inside her, everything is still, everything is briefly _right_. She forgets about Faith, she forgets that she's a killer and so is he. The inside of her head is habitable again, she even smiles softly out into the dank crypt air. There is only his hands and lips as they soothe along scratches, slide across marks, comb through the tangles and knots in her hair, murmur things she can't hear into her skin.

She wants to string this moment to a chain of gold, carry it around her neck forever.

* * *

"_Pastor Jerome went back to his empty church with its empty pews tonight_," he says over the radio. "_Nary a hair hurt on his head_."

There's silence for a beat, and she keeps driving her stolen truck, headed for the Whitetails again. She needs _air_. She feels some of his seed leak out of her, and thinks that he would be furious if he knew.

"_Margaret."_ His voice returns, but is different. Lots of things bubbling up from below, she thinks of geysers, she thinks of hell. "_What happened tonight...it will happen again."_

"Yes," she affirms to the dark road ahead. "Yes it will."

She doesn't press the talk button though.

He knows, he knows anyway.

* * *

She's back, and she has spent the entire last week killing and thinking about what he felt like inside of her.

She wonders at this strange freefall, and she contemplates turning around right now, heading back in among the trees and disappearing. Once and for all.

But she can't.

She makes her path across the graveyard, weaves between familiar tombstones; she doesn't need the moonlight to help. Steps easily down the decaying stone steps and into the familiar, terrible little world of their crypt.

They've been here enough times now that even his thick pillar candles are starting to burn down, the running wax and the tattered wicks causing the little flames to flicker wildly, casting hellish shadows across the ceiling arches, into the many alcoves holding bones.

Over him, where he stands by his pew.

That a demon could live here and yet she thinks of this place as a refuge. She doesn't know herself anymore, she's starting to doubt that she ever did.

Is starting to think that maybe he knows more parts of her than she does.

What a fucking mess.

"Do you know," she says conversationally to his turned back, "that it's summer up there?"

He spins to look at her, and there's a certain fraying to him, like the very edges of him are coming apart just a little, like atoms of him are falling away here and there.

She suspects that she's looking the same; her contours feel soluble too.

"But down here," she continues, "there are no seasons, no night or day."

His mouth curls briefly in amusement as he makes his way over to her.

"Are you saying this is purgatory?" he asks as he bends down to kiss her, just a brief touch that leaves her famished. Then he nips her lower lip, it's sharp, painful, he can never do anything soft without then doing something hard.

"Oh screw yourself, John."

His grin is brief and quite feral.

"Ah, no, Deputy, the other way around. I fully intend to have you so hard you'll feel me inside you for the rest of the week. But later! First we have confessions to spill."

She sits down.

"What do you want to know?"

He sits next to her, the pew wobbles under their combined weight and he stretches his legs out to steady it.

"You haven't been to see any of the people I've released, your friends. Why is that?"

She leans her head back, closes her eyes.

"I can't face them. I feel more and more...apart. Adrift. I know they are well." She hesitates, grasps at things hovering just out of reach. "I'm _separate_ now. Something else."

She opens her eyes, puts her head on his shoulder, and he turns slightly, his nose in her hair.

"_Even as the possibility of free will dissipates, my experience of it remains the same. I continue to feel and act as though I have it," _she quotes up to the crumbling heavens of the ceiling, and he chuckles.

"So prone to melodrama, aren't you? You've always had a choice. I _always_ gave you a choice. As for your friends…" He turns to her completely, draws her closer with an arm around her waist. "I offered them all the chance to stay, you know," he says, moves his face down her neck, breathes deeply into her skin, "so that they would live, so that they would be safe when the Collapse comes. But they all turned me down. Pity. Now they'll die instead."

She sighs and wonders what to think. About what's true and what isn't. Then there's only his hands on her, and his lips.

Before she goes he fucks her up against a pillar, her back is scraped raw and her mind flatlines and her thoughts soar free.

* * *

"_Grace Armstrong. Not __**quite **__complete, but I'll thank you not to make a big thing out of it. It was entirely her own fault."_

For the first time she doesn't go away to kill. She wants to sleep, just sleep.

But she doesn't want to dream.

* * *

"Only one left to go, Deputy. Then what will you do with yourself?"

Those words meet her as soon as she arrives. He doesn't ease himself into her chinks, does he? He kicks them wide open instead.

She has no clue what she will do with herself. This has become their little world now, and she doesn't feel safe down here, no, but her mind is almost quiet when she's with him.

Silence is so _addictive_.

"And you," she says, "what will you do?"

He doesn't answer, but his smile is crooked and his eyes flitter about for a second, they are eerie, and she thinks that she's got him a little bit too, that a small sharp part of him lives inside of her.

She needs him there.

She needs him _now_.

"I want to see you," she says, and gestures towards him, his clothes.

He understands and removes them all, she helps, until he stands before her honed and lean, wearing only his key.

He's beautiful and painted. The shadows of his hip bones draw her eyes, then her fingers, because what a riveting part of him that is, a place made of angles and softness. The shade of ghosts slips over the expanses of his skin. His ghosts, some of them he made himself. She glides across the jaggedness, explores, trails scars that are almost as old as him, follows tattoos he put there to try and cancel out the scars. Follows along the story of him, refusing to cry because he doesn't deserve it, until he wrenches her hands down, to her sides. Oh, how she enjoys his heaving chest, the pulse rushing on his neck.

He pulls at her clothes, much less patient than she, until she is as naked as him.

He grabs his coat from the pew, throws it down on the floor by his feet...

"On your knees."

...and she sinks down onto it, grabs his hips, looks up at him.

He's all pupil, his eyes are black, and he's hard, so hard, jutting right in front of her lips.

"Take me in your mouth."

And she does. Takes in as much of him as she is able, the softness, the incredible hardness underneath. She can feel his heart beat through this part of him, it thrums against her tongue as she swirls it up and down.

"You don't shine as brightly anymore, do you, little saviour? You are dimmer. But you are still beautiful, _more_ beautiful, like this. You burn with the light of long dead stars."

She glances up at him and is surprised he can talk at all, his tendons like rope in his neck and his fingers pulling, tugging, _clenching_ at her hair. She enjoys this slight power as much as she enjoys that singular taste of him deep in her throat and mouth.

He pulls out, _enough, enough now_, with a lewd pop of her lips, lifts her up, sits them both down on the broken pew. Impales her on his lap. Holds her about her ribs as she moves on him, his hands splayed, mouth open with groans.

"_This is now bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man_," he grinds out, then leans forward and kisses her so hard her lips split open on her teeth.

When she comes it's like interrupted tinnitus, sudden silence after piercing noise.

They sit embraced for a short while before he slides out of her, and she misses the burn of his beard on her breasts. He starts dressing again, she's sorry to see his skin gradually go.

"Your dear Deputy Hudson will be released later tonight. As soon as I get back," he says as he buttons up his shirt.

She doesn't want to walk out of there just yet.

"But I didn't confess."

"Oh, but you _did_. Just not with words."

He steps closer again, moves his hands through the air between them, like he can see her soul outside her body, like he can run his fingers along it.

"Those little sounds you make, pained, but not. When I hurt you and you should move away but move closer instead. When you try to come live right inside me. Those little _sighs_. Those are my favourite things about you, what I love the best. And they say _so much_."

He pushes her gently away, and she starts for the exit. He calls out for her.

"There are no resistance members left for me to release after tonight. This is it."

She doubles back across the floor and kisses him, licks into his mouth, bites his lips. Makes her own lip start bleeding again, into both their mouths. Delights in his groan, in the way he's bruising her ribs.

"No. No, this is not it, you fucking bastard."

* * *

Note:

Margaret's line "even as the possibility of free will dissipates, my experience of it remains the same. I continue to feel and act as though I have it" was stolen straight from 'Hannibal'.


	4. Chapter 4

"_If ever I to a moment shall say: _

_Beautiful moment, do not pass away! _

_Then you may forge your chains to bind me, _

_Then I will put my life behind me" _

_Faust _, J.W von Goethe

* * *

IV

* * *

She shows up the following week and so does he.

_Same time, same place, _she thinks and quells the urge to giggle. Hysteria won't help. She's not sure anything will help.

They stand looking at each other from opposing sides of the crypt, and she doesn't know what to say. She hadn't been sure he would come, and to see him here now makes her elated, makes her hopeless.

It tears at her inside.

His face flickers through so many masks of emotions as she watches, faster and faster, like an old film strip spinning out of control. Cruelty, hate, desire, vulnerability, just a frame, a quick flicker then gone. Fury, curiosity, insanity, cunning.

"You came back, Deputy. Margaret. Why is that, I wonder?"

"Well so did you," she says, and she stays where she is. Perhaps she knows, perhaps something curling in her hindbrain is telling her, _screaming _at her: if they touch again everything will be lost.

She mustn't let him touch her. She mustn't.

He stays where he is too, but she suspects it's to play with her. Fuck with her.

He's so very good at that. He wants her to come to _him _.

He opens his mouth, and she braces herself for verbal knife wounds. Slashes and stabs.

"Know what I think? I think you're losing _heart _. You killed Faith and destroyed her bunker, yet we hold the Henbane still. Joseph's busy, ah, _auditioning _for a new Faith, and once he's found her it will be like you were never even there."

She starts towards him, slowly, fists clenched at her sides, and he smiles, a wide smile, a knowing smile, a smile out for blood.

"It's like you're not even _trying _anymore. Sure, you flit around and you blow things up and you kill grunts and you loot, but...tell me. Right now, what _difference _do you make? Hmmm?"

She reaches him, drives her fist into his stomach and he laughs at her despite having the air knocked out of him.

"I think you are empty. I think you need something to fill you up. Fill that _void _."

He grabs her fist before it can connect with his jaw on the rebound, spins her, pulling her arm up on her back and he's about one millimetre from tearing her shoulder out of its socket. He chuckles against her neck, his other arm finding its way round her waist, hand resting on the skin between her top and the waistband of her jeans . She leans her head against his shoulder and ignores his delight at her hissed pain.

"Are you still trying to convert me? Really?" she whispers into his temple.

"What can I say," he answers easily. "I'm an optimist."

"No, you're not. You're _not._ You're a nihilist hiding in religion."

He doesn't answer and she doesn't expect him to. She continues instead.

"And you, then? What do you want, John? And remember, remember that you don't lie."

His hand travels upwards, up underneath her tee, finds her breast, pinches her nipple so hard she whines right into his skull. She tries to bite his ear but he jerks his head away just in time.

"What are you doing?" she snarls, but of course she recognises this for the diversionary tactic it is. He doesn't want to give her an answer.

"Seems to me, Margaret, that there are very few ways of bringing you to heel. I am simply availing myself of the surest option."

His hand finds the neckline and he rips her top from the inside out, then moves around and deftly unhooks her bra.

"You hypocrite. You can't do this."

"Then, all you need to do is say no."

She won't. She can't. She's a hypocrite too, and she enjoys living here in hell with him.

His laugh is low in her ear, full of promises of painful delight.

"I thought so. Take the rest of your clothes off."

And he forces her to do it with one arm still painfully held behind her back, with her arched awkwardly against him. When she's removed everything, her weapons thumping onto the stone floor along with her clothes, he releases her. Sure now that she won't try to attack him again, he moves around to face her, look at her, lips twitching at the flush on her cheeks, her stiff nipples.

"Ah yes, you like this, don't you? You like giving in, submitting. Does it clear your mind? Does it make everything easier when someone else take the reins, make the decisions? Do you feel _free _giving up control in this way?"

Her blush is creeping down her chest now, burning, _burning, _and goosebumps cover her body.

"Oh _fuck _you. Yes! Yes it does! Happy?"

It's the most intimate confession she's given him, and he shifts. His eyes glow_, _he's tense, poised, his movements careful and restrained.

"Why yes, very happy indeed. Whatever else we do to each other, _are _to each other, at least we don't lie. I like that."

He steps closer, tilts her face up towards him with a finger under her chin.

"When I first saw you up in the church I thought of a puma. Those big eyes. Tawny. And so _skittish _, twitching with nervous energy. Sleek and fast. Deadly." He pulls the hair tie from her thick braid, run his fingers through her hair, spreads it down her back. It brushes her temples, tickles her ribs. Then he pushes on her shoulders until she lowers herself to the ground, looks down on her, naked and on her knees before him.

"A little predator. A killer. You are so beautiful like this, and you are so young. Part of me wants to keep you perfect. In _stasis _." He walks a slow circle around her, and she keeps her gaze forward, towards the candles. Cheeks burning hot. "But a much bigger part wants to break you down. Every single time I see you I have to stop myself from crushing you. Strangling you, cutting you, breaking you. Just...tearing you apart."

"Why don't you?" she whispers, and she is ashamed of her arousal, comforted by her terror.

"I think you might be one of the few people I prefer whole. Well," he amends himself with a quirk of his lip. "Mostly whole."

Then he takes her hand and helps her back to her feet again, his point brutally, beautifully made, her confession given. She feels her soul slip and slide a little, like it has been knocked loose from her, just slightly.

Reaching for his.

He readies himself, just quick impatient movements with belt buckle and zipper, then her legs are about his waist and he's deep inside her again, and her mind goes quiet, there's only him and her, in and out, the painful assault of her cervix that she's starting to grow so addicted to, her fingers clawing at his back and his teeth on her pulse.

"You never answered my question " she pants. "Or are you just in this for the fucks? A bit of distraction?"

"You make a grave mistake if you think this" he makes a gesture to indicate them both, entangled and within each other as they are "is just me going back to old, depraved ways. No," he snaps his hips particularly viciously, and her naked back scratches against funereal stone, yes, she can smell blood. "You are _something _, you mean something to what is transpiring here. And now I don't intend to lose you." His hands come up to cup her face, soft, gentle, a startling contrast to how vehemently he's pounding her against the wall. He kisses her, just a soft slide of tongue. "You're almost mine now."

Afterwards she runs, breath high in her throat, terror pounding her skull, scared, so scared, more frightened than she's ever been in her life. He can't be right. He can't.

The ties that bind them are ephemeral. They must be.

The smell of tombstone about her hair tells a different story.

* * *

He radios her two days later.

"Tonight."

This breaks their crooked pattern; they are escalating, and really, she should ignore him, she should move in the opposite direction. Instead she starts making her way back to Holland Valley.

Of course she can't ignore him.

When she arrives she sees a white cult truck parked in the graveyard. _Trap _shrieks her frazzled mind, _he finally sprung a trap _and she spins around to run, melt back into the tree line, disappear. He steps out from behind a crumbling stone angel and grabs her around her waist, knocks the air out of her escape.

"Easy," he whispers, and his beard burns her cheek, her ear. "Easy. It's me."

She stills, but remains ready to lash out in his arms, tense and crackling with fight or flight. Whatever else he might be to her, he's still an enemy.

His face is dappled in moonlight, and he grabs her chin too hard, kisses her and she lets him. Runs her fingers through his hair and makes sure she can still feel the knife in her waistband.

She is horrified that it's only been a couple of days and still she's missed him.

"We ought to go somewhere else," he says, "I'm tired of this place."

He doesn't ask her to trust him and she is grateful, because she can't. But she goes with him. Jumps into the passenger seat as he holds the door open for her, rides next to him along winding back roads. He's silent, and a waning gibbous illuminates the landscape she's grown to care for during her time trapped here, _fighting _here. She leans her head against the window and glides along with the moonlight, follows its path across pines and mountain peaks and further, into the deep woods they are approaching, then entering.

The shadows of trees floating across the windscreen hypnotises her, so too the hum of the engine and his breaths, she's far away and blank of mind when he stops in a small clearing. She shakes herself into cognisance and hops out of the truck to a rough-hewn cottage, tumbledown and overgrown in the headlights. The windows are dark, some panes broken.

When he turns off the engine there is only the light from the moon and the night susurrus of the forest, crickets and owls and a soft, whispering wind.

She loves it.

She thinks they might be in the woods between Holland Valley and the Whitetails, but she lost her direction with her wandering mind, and she can't be quite sure. She supposes that it doesn't matter.

He puts his hand to her lower back, just a little too roughly, a bit too sure, and walks her inside. He goes about lighting candles, so she supposes there isn't any electricity, but he's covered the old bed in the middle of the room with blankets and furs, and she thinks this might be the most comfort she's seen since forever. Since before Hope County. Maybe her entire life.

He pushes her down on the bed, on top of the furs, and she stretches out, unused to the sinking feeling, drags her hands along the pelts, rubs her cheek into the softness, flexes her toes.

He undresses her almost gently while she lies face down, and she thinks this might be some new game of his, but she can't bring herself to care. Not when those tattooed hands run all along her skin, tickle down her sides, stroke over her buttocks. Not when his lips follow the bumps of her spine up, up towards her neck where he makes marks like a choker about her throat. Not when he sinks on top of her, his front to her back, his hands holding hers down, and slides home like he's got all the right in the world.

She's travelling a thousand years in swoops and falls when he's so far inside of her, and for a while, just a while, all her broken pieces are thrust into the right place.

Oh, he holds her soul between his teeth, doesn't he? If she's not careful he'll swallow it whole. If she's not careful she'll _like _it, she'll like being nestled in the darkness inside of him.

"Thank you," she speaks into his chest afterwards. "For this." She jerks her head to indicate the little ramshackle place, tatty and shabby and, for now, only real inside the illumination of their candles, but _quiet _. _Still _.

This might be the very first time she's seen a smile reach his eyes, sparking in moonlight. He combs her hair behind her ear, makes sure to scrape his nails painfully and delightfully along her scalp.

"Why don't you rest for a while? I'll watch over you."

She snorts at the heavy sarcasm in his voice as much as at his suggestion, but still curls up around him, head on his shoulder, hand on his heart. She is reassured to feel it beat, comforted by his breath on her forehead. She closes her eyes, but doesn't sleep, drifts instead, tangled so close, so close that in the grey hour right before dawn she could swear that his tattoos glide onto her skin, become something shared, tying them together in ink and sins.

She sneaks out before it gets light, and she knows he's only pretending to be asleep.

* * *

And so it goes. They meet at the cottage some nights, and it spirals into a pattern she can't quite discern or make sense of. Perhaps it's not a pattern at all. Perhaps it's just her needing to silence noise. Perhaps it's him needing the same. Perhaps they cancel out each other's voids. Perhaps there are no reasons or explanations at all, and she's glad they meet only in darkness. Light would expose too much, things she isn't prepared to see.

As for him, she is never sure what moves in his head, other than shadows and an insane need for control. She's happy to give it to him. It is blissful to feel free.

But she knows this can never end well.

It can't. It won't.

And in quiet moments, when she leaves him just before dawn, it breaks her heart.

* * *

She awakes next to him for the first time ever, has forgotten to escape in the night. It's the trill of songbirds outside that rouses her, confusing in its wrongness. He's asleep too, on his side facing her, with his jaw clenched even in rest, his knuckles white.

She wonders what he dreams of, and it frightens her that they are now comfortable enough to fall asleep next to each other.

She wraps a blanket about her naked skin and stands. She sees the place for the first time in daylight, it's just one habitable main room. When she walks through the door to what ought to be the kitchen she steps straight into the forest instead, moss covering the threshold, wildflowers and bracken for a floor.

She thinks this might be the most beautiful place in the world, and it hurts, it hurts to think that.

"It burned, and was never built back up," he says from behind her, perhaps awakened by her disappearing from his side, "but the core of it remains, and it's strong. And it's hidden away, I don't think anyone remembers that this exists."

He steps closer, presses his front to her back, rests his chin on her crown. He's naked still, and she feels the heat of him through her blanket.

She turns and walks before him back into the main room, looks at it all. The rough wooden walls and the sunlight playing through the windows and the far wall covered in shelving full of books, some even salvageable.

"I like it here," she says quietly.

He's moved over to the shelves, running his fingers along the old paper spines, eyes turned to something she can't see. Mind escaping backwards, she thinks, to the past.

"I used to love books," he says. "Books and comics. Anything with words, anything that meant I could run away inside."

She crunches across the dead leaves on the floor to reach him.

"Does Joseph know? About…this?" She had been about to say "us" but cuts it away before it can escape, but he sees the word still, she knows he does, where it's hovering on her tongue.

If she won't give it to him he will take it anyway, always, and he leans forward and sucks it from her mouth.

"No," he answers at last. "And he mustn't. Not ever. Not _now _."

She comes close to recoiling, because she believes him. She _believes _him. This is something else now, this is no longer about the bartering of souls, about atonements and the end of the world. About little games. It's not about Joseph either.

It's about _them _. Him and her. Somewhere along the way things twisted enough, broke enough, that something new grew out of it. And she can't bear it.

"What will he do if he finds out?"

There is death in his eyes when he considers, old decay, and she's cold suddenly, even though she's grown comfortable in the bleak midnight of him.

"Nothing pleasant," he finally decides, "for either of us.

She turns, steps outside, stands on the half-rotted porch. Ivy twines the railing, and she can smell wild thyme nearby, carried to her on the wet wind. The rain falls gently onto the old tin roof above her, and she can almost hear how the betrayed nature around her is reclaiming this old place. It's high summer now, and the air is heavy with growth, with lushness, and she loves this hideaway place of theirs, she loves it so much it hurts.

Its impermanence claws and scratches on her skin.

She starts at a sudden wail, a shout, the most forlorn and haunting sound she's ever heard. It echoes around the woods, around her mind. And then he's with her again, embraces her from behind.

"A loon," he says. "There's a wood pool behind here."

There is something strange and faraway about him today, and he smells of winter, of cedars covered in snow. That smokiness underneath it all. Trust him to disregard the headiness of summer and carry a season of his own around with him.

He seems to pluck things from her mind again, buries his nose in her hair.

"You smell of herbs and summer and too many thoughts." Then: "Come back to bed."

She does, because what else can she do?

And it's so deviant to be with him, fuck him, in _daylight _. She'd almost always seen him in different shades of darkness. Lit by starlight and headlights down by the river. By sickly red in his bunker. By frenzy and ravenous glee in the church down Fall's End. Candlelight and snaking shadows in the crypt.

Now he's covered in sun, and she sees the fine lines on his face, the hint of grey in his beard, the startling blue of his eyes. It's unfamiliar and strangely addictive, seeing him like this, like he's somehow got a right to move inside light, even though he doesn't belong there.

It's the first time she's been on her back underneath him. His face flickers in and out of focus, a fugue state she can't be without, and the slickness of their skin and the halo round his head where its backlit by the window, she's trying to memorise all of it. Tuck it away someplace safe so she will always have it.

"Do you want all of it?" she asks him afterwards.

"What's that?" He pulls her a bit closer, slides his thigh between hers.

"My soul. Do you want all of it or will you make do with pieces?"

He needs no time to consider.

"All or nothing."

"I'm not sure that can ever happen."

"Oh, I really think it could," he says and with a gesture indicates her, naked and sated and so close to him she is almost inside his skin.

"This? This is fucking," she says, disregarding the bird song and the quiet beauty around them, the hollowness of her voice.

"Just fucking? Well, that pierced me right through my heart," he mocks, and digs his nails into her side in retaliation. She hears the loon calling again.

"Heart? You aren't supposed to lie,"she reminds him. "You forget that by now I am intimately familiar with the hole where you heart should be."

He huffs a laugh. It's broken and full of tiny shards, but they gleam so prettily in a certain light.

"Well, you _should _be. You live in that hole now."

* * *

It's running towards autumn. There are no changes in colours yet, but there's a knowing chill in the air at night, just a touch, and a rush of activity in nature all around her.

Birds begin to move away.

Different constellations slowly infiltrating the sky.

She's exhausted all the time now, like energy is leaking out of her body into the grass, the bedrock, the earth.

"You look pale. Transparent," he tsks, but his eyes are roving and sharp as he looks over her. "Must I bring food, should I nourish my enemy? What are the rules here? Should I tell my men to go easy on you for a little while?"

"Oh do fuck off, John." But her heart isn't in it, she's so tired, and nothing is going anywhere, there are stalemates and walls wherever she turns.

For once he doesn't punish her for her lip, rather leans back against the headboard, pulls her up against him and rubs her aching temples with dexterous fingertips.

"What are your men's orders when it comes to me anyway?" she asks after a while, turning to face him.

"Capture alive, then bring to me." His eyes go peculiar, half-shut, like he only wishes to give her access to half his thoughts. As if she ever is privy to _any _. "And I am all about catch and release when it comes to you, Margaret. My _siblings _might not be so generous. Think of that every time you venture into their areas."

She's nauseous and dizzy and has a pounding headache, but he's burying importance underneath sharp glibness and she feels that she needs to grasp it.

"Why?"

He shakes his head, clenches his fists by his side. He won't give her that, won't give her the answer she wants, plays her just by habit perhaps,

"Trust me when I say that I would like nothing more than lock you inside the most secure room in my bunker. But, you must agree to everything willingly or it won't count."

"Is that Joseph's rule?"

A flickering smile, a jerk of his head.

"No. It's mine. It applies only to you."

* * *

She heads to the cottage on her own one afternoon, just to hide, to sleep. Escape. Her thoughts are too much and too slow at the same time, her body aches and she has to stop to throw up in the dog rose bush outside the door.

She sinks onto the bed and sleeps and sleeps, fretfully, brokenly, full to the brim with nightmares and uncertainty.

She awakes to the smell of him, the warmth. He's pressed to her side, hand combing through the snarls in her hair. His eyes are distant and dull. She's not sure how long she slept, she's not sure what day it is.

"You didn't answer the radio. No reported sightings of you. I came here to find you," he says by way of explanation, and she hates that she feels briefly safe.

His hands are busy, sliding along her naked thighs, then up under her sweaty tee, he strokes along a breast, then the other. Cups them both as gently as he is able, feel how swollen they are, the heaviness, the tenderness. Continues down to her belly, hovers there for a second before touching down and tracing scripture of his own onto her skin.

"When had you planned to tell me?"

"I hadn't." She puts her hand on top of his, moves it away from her stomach. She had found out herself in a dirty toilet stall just the week before, and her mind is still heaving and roiling, the vertigo is still crippling. "But I did want to see...I had planned to see you one more time before…"

"Before what?" His voice is like glass, and fury is ever curling around the edges, but there is something else too, something raw. Damaged.

"I honestly don't know," and she _is _, she is honest.

"You can't…you can't…" he sounds like he's choking on rage and other emotions, but then he finds his words and eloquence again. He finds his strength too, as he holds her down beneath him, bruising her wrists.

"Whatever it is you plan on doing, I won't let you. I won't allow it."

She looks up at him and she's so tired.

"Well, if you're right, if your brother is right, the end of the world is coming. What does it matter, then?"

"You could still be saved. You both could. If you _came with me, _if you joined us."

She moves up to kiss him, has to strain against his hold to reach his lips. There is something ancient coiled in the blue of his eyes, something primeval.

"You know I won't ever do that, John."

"Yes," he rasps, and kisses her back, releases one of her wrists to grab at her throat, her pulse. "I know."


	5. Chapter 5

"_Two souls, alas, are dwelling in my breast_

_And one is striving to forsake its brother."_

_Faust_, J.W von Goethe

* * *

V

* * *

She's carrying her few belongings around with her everywhere now, in a tattered backpack she'd stolen at one of the outposts. Ready to slip away at a moment's notice, because this is not her fight any longer. The cult has sealed off Hope County to the rest of the world, but she ought to be able to make her way out through a mountain pass. As long as she leaves before the autumn storms. She's resilient, and it's still early on for her. She's not yet physically hindered. She could do it.

And yet. And _yet_.

He's in her veins now; he's in her marrow. The darkness of him has seeped inside and met with hers, and it's unalterable. The merged atoms, they can't be unfused.

And she has seen things in his eyes, in the rigid curvature of his shoulders, the shadows on his face, in the way he holds himself when he rages.

If she leaves, escapes with his child, he'll break totally, absolutely. Wholly. He will. There'll be no telling what havoc he'll wreak, what damage he'll cause the world.

If she disappears now, he will take the final, tiny step from black and grey nuances and over the line to true monstrosity.

And that will be on her.

She tucks her backpack into twisting, thorny brambles, then steps into the clearing.

He sits on the stoop of the fall-down porch waiting for her, embraced by indian summer. There is dried, brown blood encrusted around his nails, flecks of it on his collar, and she knows that outside of _them_ he remains who he always was.

John Seed. Shapeshifter with a gangrenous, keening soul.

She wonders if the blood on his hands matches hers.

He looks at her face as she stops in front of him, searches, catalogues, knows.

"You're so tired," he says, and stands. "Walk with me."

And she does, so help her. He takes her wrist, holds it slightly too hard, and they drift into the woods behind the cottage. The ground is blanketed by moss and bracken and fallen needles, silencing their steps. The colours _are_ changing now, shyly, in her periphery. Soft tones of copper and gold in the corner of her eye, not yet straight on.

She wants to walk in silence with him forever, with the warmth of his fingers manacling her wrist, tethering her to him.

But what a wretched anchor he is, one of the most damaged, warped beings she's ever come across. And she must be too, because it's peace she feels right now, she's almost sure of it. It's threadbare, yes still sharp and clear in its novelty. Sharp enough to cut through the nausea, the lightheadedness, and the dread.

The sorrow.

"Joseph says it will happen soon."

So of course he has to go and break it.

She doesn't answer. Despite what happened to her, what she _saw_, in the Bliss she isn't sure she believes, so how can she give him an answer, let alone one he would want to hear? She tries to pull her wrist from him instead, but he won't allow it. Like he thinks she will set flight right now, escape, disappear before his very eyes.

He knows her as well as she knows him. Better. He knows her better, and she had never meant for it to happen.

They walk on beneath trees with entwined branches, a natural cathedral above their heads, moving together in a quiet green dusk.

"Your eyes glow in this light," he tells her. "Almost amber. You are a wild thing, aren't you? You belong in woods like these." He stops her, digs his fingers hard into her shoulders. "Soon these woods will be gone, Margaret. All gone. Do you understand?"

At her continued silence he kisses her, tugs her into him so hard he knocks most of her breath away, and the rest he steals with his mouth. And what she sees in him just when they pull apart, when his eyes are so close to hers that their irises might blend together and their souls leap from one to the other, it terrifies her.

Chills her.

There is no telling what he will do to protect what he sees as his.

The ground becomes softer as they walk, and soon they step into a little glade and she is looking at water. Dark, with lily pads floating on the surface, pines and heavens reflected among them. A water bird disturbs the mirror images. Bright red eyes, plumage black and white in a pattern she thinks might mean something, but she can't decipher it; it's a secret. The bird dives underwater at their arrival, surfaces again among the reeds at the far end of the pond. Then it calls, and she shivers.

"The loon," he says. He tugs her down with him, to sit on the moss right at the water's edge. "They are monogamous birds. This one must have lost its mate. Or it's ill, or injured."

He pulls her down to rest her head on his lap, she lets him, and she sinks into sleep without fighting it.

No dreams. Just nothingness.

She wakes to him twining flowers into her braid. It's gone past dusk, the brightest constellations burning into life above her and evening mist curling on the surface of the wood pond in front of her.

Gossamer, starlight.

The loon calls again, the mist wrapping about the sound. She thinks it might stay in her head forever. The moon is new and the air cold and sharp, and she loves this place, loves it enough to have fought for it for so long but now she…

...she doesn't want to think about it.

His hand moves under her shirt where she lays, and he strokes her belly. It's far too early, but she fancies that the little being now living in there slowly flutters upwards, attracted by his unnatural warmth.

It's too much, too close, and she moves so that she sits in his lap instead. Unbuttons his shirt, leans forward and tries to breathe life into his scars and tattoos. In this soft, languid darkness they are beautiful, and they whisper secrets into her mouth when she traces them with her lips.

She leans her cheek against his heartbeats, but he doesn't allow her to stay like that. He's already been still for a long time, far too long for him, she can feel the restlessness in waves underneath his skin, the ever present need for destruction.

"Let's head back," he says, and moves her off him, stands, and she doesn't protest. He's already given her more than she ever expected, sitting so quietly while she slept.

He must have lit candles earlier, because she sees light from the cottage as they approach, windows glowing pinpricks in the night. Seeing it like this from a distance makes her throat constrict: safety, light in darkness.

She hopes it will stand here for a long time after she is gone. She would find comfort in that, knowing that whatever happens to her, this place remains; secret-keeper, old beating heart.

He breaks away from her side briefly as they approach, slips into the shadows and returns holding her backpack. Her breath catches, her shoulders tense. He must have seen her hide it there earlier, even though she's thought herself so careful.

He says nothing. Nor does she.

Her instincts scream at her though, but the way he puts his hand on her neck prevents any flight. His grip isn't harsh or restraining, rather his fingers stroke the thin skin on the side of her throat, but the warning is implicit.

Don't run.

They step inside, and she regrets it straight away. She still cast her eyes around it all, tucking it into her memory; the walls and the roof with branches through it, the books, the wildflowers and the peace, the bed and the faint whisper of happiness.

He immediately moves to stand in front of the door, blocks her way. Drops her backpack on the floor between them, arches a brow, toes it with his boot.

"You've been quiet recently, haven't you? No quaint body trails, no properties jauntily on fire. Planning to leave, are we?"

She doesn't answer because she promised, didn't she, she promised not to lie.

Before she can back out of the door leading to the vanished kitchen and dart away into the forest he's stalked forward and grabbed her. He's fast, faster than she's ever seen him. But he's a predator, he always has been. Sometimes he's hidden it better than others, but now, oh now it's writhing and snarling right behind his eyes. Fanged, manic. His grip is punishing, he's bruising her.

"Free will," she reminds him in a hoarse whisper.

"That applies to _you. _But you are _two_ now, and the second part, that second part is as much _me_ as _you_. The emptiness inside you, it echoes inside the emptiness in me. A feedback loop. Do you understand? But now there's something else too, something _good_, and…"

"Do you see this child as a chance for _redemption_?" she whispers in horror, in disgust.

With _recognition_, even though she tries to avoid mirrors as much as possible.

"No," he answers immediately. "That's impossible. Too late. For _both_ of us," he adds knowingly, cruelly. "But that light might come out of our darkness, that's...I _want_ that. I want to see that. And I won't let you keep it from me."

"It's not safe here," she rasps instead of _you would taint that light _which is what she wants to say, but she can't bring herself to be quite that vicious.

"You're safer here, with me, than _anywhere_ else!" He's shouting now, straight into her face, deranged, eyes impossibly dark. Rage so hot and wild it burns her bones. Rage that fires and shapes her own.

"How do you expect me to believe that?" she says. "How? The word of a doomsday prophet? _Your _word? There have been nothing but bullets and death flying about my head since I came here. There are corpses strung up wherever I look. Barbed wire and fucking _Bliss_. How do you expect me to feel safe here, have a child here?"

At her words he suddenly reins himself in, voice even and smooth again, movements softer - how mercurial he is, how unpredictable.

How incredibly dangerous.

"Do you know, in this old story we've been reliving, the scholar who sold his soul to the devil did so with the agreement that when he found a moment so beautiful that he would want to live in it forever, that is when he would die."

His voice is bitter, and he eats the tears from her eyes before they can fall, holding her far too hard. She's ashamed of how she leans into his warmth, seeking his heartbeat, his pulse.

"But the parts were switched along the way, weren't they, and the girl became the scholar and the demon became the one with the bartered soul."

"We both bartered our souls," she says, "and we both lost." Then: "Please let me go."

They both know she isn't just talking about his grip on her arms.

"Think on it for a week, then meet me back here. You owe me that, Margaret."

"I don't owe you anything, John Seed," she says softly, almost gently.

"That's where you're wrong," he hisses, pulls her towards him and bites her where her neck meets shoulder. "You owe me everything. You belong to me, all of you, you are _mine_. You always were."

He pushes her backwards onto the bed and follows immediately, straddles her and cages her in with his arms. Bites her again, eager to affirm his claim, and because he knows how much relief and silence she finds in this sort of domination. Manipulates her so well, so skilfully, and she doesn't fight him.

She doesn't want to.

He tears open her shirt and rips her bra, and hazily she notes that he's trying to be careful with her tender breasts, cups them gently enough, but rubs his beard so harshly against her nipples that she whines low in her throat. Unsure if it's pleasure or if it's pain. He mouths at her nipples, uses teeth, and she groans and tries to touch him too, but he's got her arms trapped above her head now and he's refusing to let her free.

He gets rid of her jeans and underwear and boots deftly enough one-handed, and the cooler winds blowing through the broken windows sooth her feverish skin. She can't remember him ever looking more beautiful and terrible, his hair falling down his forehead like bird wings, his teeth bared in a snarl, and that eclipse inside of him seeping through his eyes.

It touches her skin, it touches her lips. Slides inside her through her mouth, coils around her heart.

He stills then, looks down on her, naked and trapped and supplicant beneath him.

"Don't for a second think you can get away from me."

He flips her onto her stomach, then pulls her hips up, holds her head down into the blankets by her hair, crushing petals and releasing dark, poisonous wildflower scents.

"You'll always feel me, I'll always be there."

Her head spins, and she feels him pull himself free of his jeans, line up, and buck inside. Impales her completely, absolutely, irreversibly.

"...Even if you run."

She's a lot more sensitive than usual and cries out, making him harden his grip, before snapping his hips in a breathless absence of rhythm.

"You're crazy if you think I'll ever truly let you go."

There's nothing of his usual artistry to the fucking. He's brute and rough, and there's desperation in there too, but right now she couldn't imagine it any other way. She pushes back against him best as she can in his hold, rolls her hips, tries to take him impossibly deep. She can hear the noises she makes from a distance, and realises it's his name she's chanting, chanting it like a prayer.

They finish together, he with a strangled growl and blunt nails down her sides, she with a final shout of his name. He pulls her back up towards his chest by her hair, finds her mouth with his and steals the worship from her tongue.

Then they fall together down on the bed, and they're even more fused now, she thinks, what a fool, what a fool she's been.

He strokes the new, slight swell of her belly again, seems unable to keep away, moves across it with gentle fingers like he's tapping secret code into her skin. A silent, mysterious communion, and she wishes, begs, that he won't say anything else now, that he won't say something to break her more.

"Who knew that a demon could grow to feel a mimicry of love?"

He speaks anyway, voice quiet, and she strokes his hair and all the wild thoughts at his temples, and she stares up into the ceiling. Pulls resolution about her skin like a scratchy cloak.

"One week, John. I'll see you here next week." _Then that's it_, she doesn't say, but he hears her loud and clear anyway, she can tell by how he digs his fingers into her hips.

She stands from the bed and he lets her. She gets dressed with dead leaves whirling about her feet, then she makes for the doorway, needs to get away from him before he changes his mind and chains her to him with violence and force.

She stops at the sound of his whisper.

"'_Stay a while_," he quotes, "_you are so beautiful'_."

She is his moment, and he is hers.

Soon it must end.

She grabs her backpack from the floor and slinks away through the undergrowth, crying as she goes, because she doesn't ever want to be wrenched from this microcosmos that she shares with him. It's safe here; perhaps they could live here forever.

(she knows they can't)

Later, in a tiny shower stall above the Spread Eagle, she watches how the torn flowers he put in her hair whirl around the drain by her feet.

Hemlock and belladonna and monkshood.

* * *

"Stay a while, you are so beautiful" is from Faust and arguably one of the most famous lines from that story.

Hemlock, belladonna and monkshood are very poisonous plants, each with a lot of symbolism attached.


	6. Chapter 6

"_Lie heart to heart and merge my soul with yours_."

_Faust_, J.W von Goethe

* * *

VI

* * *

And so a week later she walks through dense woods back towards the cottage, armed with conviction and cruel words and knives. In case he won't listen to her. In case she has to hurt him to set herself free.

She tries to ignore the fact that, by now, if she hurt him she would hurt herself more.

She shouldn't come at all; it's fucking _stupid_, but he's right, she does owe him something, and anyway...she's perfectly capable of recognising addiction. Just not, apparently, doing anything about it.

One more hit. One more rush through her bloodstream.

She's come the long way round, parked her stolen truck a couple of miles away at the end of a dirt track leading nowhere, approaching from the back because she wants to pass by the forest pool he showed her. And she walks slowly, tries to take it all in, inhale the woods, let it sink into her lungs and heart.

In just a week the colours of nature have changed significantly. They are forthright, imposing, copper and intense, and she can feel it through her skin, how everything is hurtling for one final, rapturous rush of adrenaline before limbo.

S_oon these woods will be gone. _It's impossible for her to forget his words, touched with wild prophecy and run through with madness, hard for her to believe. But _he _believes, that is beyond doubt, and her head hurts with the implications, with distrust and confusion.

She doesn't know what to think, can't tell truth from lies from delirium any longer. Doesn't dare trust his conviction, born as it is out of blood and screams.

The only thing she knows for certain is that she can no longer take risks, can no longer draw bullets and fire. Attract violence. And she's tired, so tired, of never staying more than an hour or two in a place before moving on, evading capture. She can only be at rest, stay in one place, when with _him_.

And he never stands still.

She's deep inside her own head, walking through the autumn dusk with her mind in flight, so it takes her some time to realise that the smell curling in her nose is smoke. She can see the pond emerging through the trees, a last sunbeam glittering on the water, but she disregards it. She quickly stows her backpack under some ferns, then heads for the cottage. Her step is agitated but sure, navigating these woods as though she was born in them. In a way she was. She is someone else now, fired and honed and shaped by Hope County.

She doesn't need to get close, doesn't need to step into the clearing to see that the embers of the cottage match the blood red of the setting sun. But she does anyway, walks so near to the ruin that she can feel the insistent heat against her face.

It's all been burned to the ground. Taken some of the old undergrowth with it too, wildflowers and lady ferns, the dog rose bush, has singed the old trees that hovered protectively over the old house.

The loss paralyses her, make her careless, and she leaves herself wide open for ambush where she stands staring at the smouldering foundations of her eye in the storm. There are hard voices and gunshots, and a bullet grazes her temple before she can roll to cover among trees and bracken.

She doesn't run. Not immediately. The fury is sudden, white hot and eager, and she embraces it like she would a lover. Can feel it sinking into her bones, flowing through her fingertips, making her hair almost static. Oh yes, this is comfortable and safe. She knows this.

And she's _missed_ this feeling. John has tempered it some, purely by force of his own rage, but he's not here now.

She rolls back out in the open, and mechanically, assuredly, she notes her targets. Five of them. Bearded and dirty and heavily armed. Grunts.

She kills. Breaks necks, vertebrae, spines. Feels flesh parting for her knife, again and again. Rents and tears. It's wonderfully soothing, warm in its familiarity.

She realises at one point that she's giggling shrilly as she goes.

It doesn't take long before her body betrays her though. She's hardly in optimal condition, and adrenaline and wrath can only carry her so far. And they keep coming, these believers, mad-eyed and fervent in their conviction. She can hear cars roaring up the old track, can hear radio static and shouts in among the trees. Knows that soon she will be overrun.

She flees.

She's being cut off from the pond and her backpack, she can hear more people approaching from that way. She veers off to the side, hurtles through thick growth, branches and thorns whipping at her, her breath a staccato rhythm in her mouth.

The wound at her temple stings and bleeds, but the loss hurts more, clinging to her bones, sitting deep down in her throat, choking her.

She would wail, but hasn't the energy.

The radio sputters static at her hip.

"_This had nothing to do with me. It was Joseph_," comes his voice, and it's emotionless, blank, but even so she finds herself believing him. She might not understand vast parts of what lives inside of him, but he had cared for that cottage, too. "_He thinks that if he takes everything away from you, leaves you with nothing, then you will come."_

She takes cover beneath a rocky outcrop and realises she's crying, but she doesn't care. All her life everything that she dared love has been taken from her. She had still foolishly let herself love that place. As well as...

"And you?" she answers, holds the radio so close to her mouth she's practically chewing on the metal casing. "Would he take away you?"

The silence is long, and she's careful not to let him hear her sobs. Something drips onto the hand she holds in her lap and she thinks it's tears, but when she looks down she sees it's blood from the gunshot wound on her head. It's dripping into her palm, forming a Rorschach test she can't make sense of. She stares hard at it, convinced that the answers she seeks can be found in red and white blood cells, in plasma.

"_Meet me back at the crypt." _he says at last, doesn't answer her question. "_I don't think he knows about that."_

"It'll be a while," she answers. "I've been cut off from the car. I'm on foot."

A beat.

"_As soon as you can make it, Margaret. Don't underestimate my brother."_

Then he's gone and she stands up, starts walking even though she can't remember ever feeling this weary. She could lay herself down right here and sleep all night, no, longer than that. A week, a month, right through Joseph's fucking Collapse. Covered by moss and hemlock, part of the landscape.

Wryly she thinks of an old poem, of lovely deep woods and promises to keep. Certainly no sleep.

A shard of a moon has risen when her radio spews static again. Impatiently she grabs it from her hip.

"I'm on my way. I told you it would take some time."

"_Deputy_."

She stops. John doesn't call her that anymore. And the voice is calm, lacking the rage eternally bubbling underneath.

Joseph.

"What do you want?"

"_I'm sorry I had to burn that place down. But it's for your own good. To help you see. Help you accept. You do not only have yourself to consider anymore. Cease this needless fighting, this needless risk taking, and come to us."_

"How do you...did John…"

"_The Voice told me, Deputy."_

'The Voice' she thinks, or perhaps his acolytes following her and fishing the used pregnancy test from the trash bin outside Aubrey's. She supposes it's the same difference at the end of the day.

She wonders how much he knows, and for how long.

"_John said nothing, even though I was...persuasive. Sadly I believe him incapable of love, but he feels something strong enough for you to attempt to protect you. Protect you both. Possession, I think."_

A sigh_._

"_My brother...I love him. But he's not a good man."_

"I've never even for a second entertained the notion that he is," she says into the mouthpiece, and she speaks the truth. "And you?"

A brief silence.

"_No. Perhaps I am not. But I am trying to atone for this every day. I'm trying to save people; I am trying to walk them into a beautiful new world."_

"Atone for _murdering_ your little girl?" she snarls.

She can still remember the terror and revulsion she had felt in that cage when he told her; it had cut clean through starvation and thirst and conditioning. Absently she touches her belly. Traces along the 'liar' scar, tries to feel deeper than that. Reassure the life inside. Reassure herself.

"_She would have stood in the way for all that I must do, all the lives I must save. One life for a thousand. One flickering, struggling flame for so many souls burning bright. She never suffered. She never knew."_

A brief silence, filled by her vertigo, her cold sweat.

"_The child you are carrying, Deputy, she's got a place here with us. I've seen it. A Faith of blood, by nature, not design. A beautiful thing. A righteous thing, returning what you took."_

She feels violently sick then, nausea burning and roiling in her gut, shivers wrecking her. Her teeth shatter with it, and it's all she can do not to vomit on her boots.

She realises that she's stopped, that she's leaning forward by her waist, radio dangling loosely from one hand. She brings it to her mouth again, tries to shake the double vision out of her head.

"What was her name? Your daughter? What was her name?"

A long, unbroken silence tells her everything she needs to know.

"You never gave her a name, did you? Fuck you, Joseph. _Fuck. You._ You're insane if you think I'll join you, if you think I'll let you anywhere near my child."

She can hear his pained hum even through the static.

"_Then...everything you love must burn."_

Then he's gone, and she keeps moving towards the crypt. Back to where the end of her started.

* * *

She runs her hands along tombstones as if they are dear friends, long lost to her. She takes in the waning moonlight on mausoleums and statues, and thinks that she sees restless spirits and ghouls leaping from shadow to shadow.

They won't touch her though; she's a friend.

She descends, breathes in the funeral air, and this is her home, isn't it, this subterranean darkness, with its whispers and secrets and death. Ah, bleached bones and the long ago scent of decaying lilies! The cottage in the woods had been a beautiful mirage, a secret nook in time, but never meant for people like him and her. Yes, she loved it there, in the forest, and in a different life she would've run between the sun dapples and the first golds forever, would've climbed with the birdsong and _belonged_ there, as he had said.

But now is now, and she's here. She can't be anywhere else.

She angrily swipes at her tears.

He stands from the pew as she steps inside, and she sees him through darkness, because he hasn't bothered with the candles. She does it instead, lights a couple while he slowly approaches. He holds himself gingerly, moves as though things are broken and bleeding inside.

"What did he _do_ to you?" she whispers.

He laughs, even though she can tell that it hurts him to do so.

"It's what he thinks he did to _you_. Didn't you know, Margaret, that there is only one way to hurt someone who has lost everything? Give them something broken back." He throws his arms out, presents himself, oh and all the dark matter in his eyes, reflecting this hinterland of theirs.

He is terribly injured, but acts as though he could walk off death itself. Perhaps he could, but perhaps he's just a man. She's never been entirely sure. Maybe madness and darkness in just the right quantities and measures could make one immortal. Leave it to him to discover such alchemy.

"Besides, he was somewhat unimpressed with my, ah, _unorthodox_ methods for attempting to bring you into the fold. He had many words on the subject of my disgrace and fall, Margaret. Many, many words."

He rolls his eyes, and teases a strangled laugh from her. Whatever else he is, he's still wholly himself; mordant and cynical, vicious and mad, and so broken he can never be put back together again.

She could no less stop herself going to him, putting her arms around him, than she could stop herself from killing to feel good. Killing and fucking, and no wonder she belongs in a crypt.

With him.

He hisses when her arms touch his ribs, running his mouth along her crown.

"You smell of blood."

"Only some of it is mine," she answers with her cheek against his chest, with his fingers playing with her head wound. Then his hands travel down, slips underneath her torn shirt to her belly to stroke the life underneath her skin.

"He says it's a girl. He says she will be a Faith."

That's fear in her voice, exposed and ugly. She looks up at him and doesn't miss the ripple of disgust that moves across his face. He has never liked what his adopted sisters stood for. He's a man of manipulation and malovelent force, not mind rape and lobotomy.

"I won't let that happen."

His teeth are bared and she would like to believe him. She really would.

But the risk is too great.

He runs his fingers along the lines of her face, seems to need the warmth of her skin to stay steady.

"Let's go outside. I need air."

He walks ahead of her up the stairs, back straight, used to disregarding pain. These days other's more than his own, but muscle memory appears to favour him. Outside he comes to a stop beside the broken angel where he had ambushed her a lifetime ago. Or the summer just gone.

The light is dim, but she sees him plainly. He doesn't need much moonlight, he's mostly darkness anyway. He pulls her close, almost inside of him, even though she can tell by the way he breathes that it pains him to do so.

"You slot into me, don't you? Some of your broken pieces, jagged as they are, match up with mine." He laughs, coughs. "What a terrible jigsaw we make."

He leans back against the angel, tilts his head to look up at the sky.

"Orion," he says, and his gaze slides unevenly along the invisible lines between the stars. "The first constellation I learned how to pick out. It used to make me feel safe when he was overhead."

He smiles.

"Then I learned to fly and I was up there with him. A very specific kind of freedom, flying. And always impermanent."

He looks down on her again, where she's holding on to him and her tears at the same time.

"I wonder if the Collapse will force the stars from their given places in the sky. If, when we emerge again, the heavens will look different." Then: "Come away with me."

His hold on her is far too hard but never hard enough. She feels as though she is already slipping through his fingers, like she is becoming mist in his grip.

"I know you won't, can't, join us, but you and I, we could leave here. I've got the plane, we could make it far enough away that…"

She kisses a stop to his words, and he seems to understand that she can't bear to hear anymore. He continues anyway, because when has he heeded her, yielded to her? Never. That's not who they are.

"I need to head back to the ranch, and to the bunker. Make some satellite calls, call in old _favours - _you're not the only one to owe me a soul. And I need to bring together provisions and equipment, if we're to stand a fighting chance." His voice lowers, becomes a dark growl. "And I fully intend for us to stand a chance."

"John…"

"Meet me down by the boathouse, same time tomorrow. Then we'll leave."

"I need to sleep. And I need my backpack. I had to dump it when I was attacked by your brother's men."

It's not an answer but it's an accusation and they both know it. He touches his forehead to hers, forces the issue, and she could hate him for it.

"Will I see you here tomorrow? Will you come?"

Her mind races, her mind slows. He knows her so well, but she knows him too. If she refuses, point blank, he will simply use force, take all her choice away, all her agency.

"Yes," she lies and his smile is ugly and his eyes turn hard and cold, but the fucking blue in them is just for her, she knows it is, she _knows_.

He doesn't say anything, doesn't challenge her, and what a gift he's giving her. She can't even thank him for it.

"Until tomorrow then," he says, and she nods, leaves without touching him again.

She breaks and shatters the entire way.

* * *

She reaches the wood pool by sunup, and falls asleep immediately, straight on the ground, only her old coat for cover. The grass is soft enough, but she doesn't sleep as well as last time, when she was here with him. It's broken and fretful and she's so cold.

She wakes again late afternoon, and takes a minute to just sit and look at this place, with its dark water and lily pads and moss-covered stones. She can't see the loon, it's gone now, but she can still hear the echoes of that desolate call as she crouches on the stones and looks down into the water. It's so black, so still, so beautiful. She wonders if she would float on the surface, like Faith had floated down the Henbane, or if she would sink to the bottom. She wonders if there _is_ a bottom, or if she would simply sink forever.

A beautiful sort of stasis, she thinks, always looking up through the water at the pines and the mountains peaks she loves so much, how they cycle through all the different seasons while she remains the same, falling towards a bottom that doesn't exist.

She looks down into the water with vague curiosity. She's been avoiding mirrors since..._him_, but she studies herself now. Her ashen hair has been allowed to grow longer than ever before, and she keeps it in a braid when he's not…He seems to like her hair, likes to untie it and run his fingers through it, like to grab it and pull it when he fucks her, like to see it stream loose down her back when she moves naked around the cottage.

But the cottage is gone.

She shakes her head, looks at her face. It has grown angular, with hollows and shadows under her cheekbones, skin so pale it's near transparent despite all the time she spends outdoors. And her eyes...she traces a fingertip around her mirror image, turns her face into a maelstrom. She can't bear her own eyes.

She runs her hands along her contours instead. Prominent collarbone, severe lines. But there is new softness too, her swollen breasts, her stomach now with a slight but unmistakable swell, hard to hide even under her shirt.

She writes him a letter on the surface of the water, her fingertip shakily spelling out words, all the things she can't tell him, all the secrets she holds inside. The water will keep it for her, and perhaps one day he'll come back here and see.

Then she retrieves her backpack, and heads for the mountains.

* * *

She's come high enough up the Whitetails that she's had to abandon the quad and start climbing in earnest, hitting the steeper inclines, when she stops for a break. She doesn't want to, she wants to keep going until she falls down unconscious from exhaustion, but that would be selfish. So she sits on a crest high above Hope County, her back turned, and reaches into the bag for food.

Her hand grasps at a strange object near the bottom, hard, foreign. Not _hers_. She stiffens and gingerly pulls it out, holds it between her fingers, ready to hurl it off the cliff at a second's notice.

She looks at it, and she weeps.

It's a wooden plane, a child's toy, small enough to fit in the palm of her hand. Roughly, amateurishly carved, perhaps...perhaps by an older brother. Then worn smooth by years and years of fingers holding it, stroking it, maybe carrying it around in a pocket. It's been carved in oak, she believes, but time has darkened it into a deep, burnished amber.

The sounds she can hear from a distance are her own sobs and her soul fragmenting.

Nevermind. It's not like her soul even belongs to her any longer.

She can't do this. She _can't_.

She turns around.

Damned, she's _damned_, and she's a fool, but she turns around.

Maybe there's still time.

* * *

She sees a flash of blue between the trees as she approaches the boathouse, and she knows he's still there. He's still waiting for her, even though he knew that she lied, and her heart breaks in ways she didn't think possible.

He hurls around when he hears her approach, eyes wide, hands clenched into fists at his side.

"I didn't think you would come."

His voice is queer, distant, peculiar resonances. There is grief in his eyes, and _triumph_too. But she pushes onward, walks all the way up to him. Smiles.

"Me neither," she says. Runs her hands down his arms, his tattoos, touches her fingers to his. Laughs and cries when he grabs at them far too hard, leans forward and kisses her so violently she can taste his soul and his madness on her tongue. There's a dark susurrus in her head, that of a thousand fluttering wings trashing against walls.

"Lets go," she says.

"Yes," he says.

* * *

"_And they are gone: aye, ages long ago _

_These lovers fled away into the storm."_

* * *

The lines quoted at the very end are by John Keats, from The Eve of St Agnes.

The whole "give something broken back" is borrowed by Stephen Donaldson, one of my all time favourite authors. I've changed it a little, the actual lines are "This you have to understand. There's only one way to hurt a man who's lost everything. Give him back something broken." and it's from The Wounded Land, a book that broke my heart in all sorts of imaginative ways.


End file.
